SELWESKI: Michigan kids left in the economic dust

Education officials who spent a good portion of their career at the blackboard are again whitewashing the disturbing academic test scores of Michigan high school students.

The Michigan Department of Education last week released the annual scores by 11th-graders on the Michigan Merit Exam and the ACT, which is required to gain entry to most 4-year colleges.

High school juniors fared slightly worse than their counterparts from a year ago, but education officials pointed to a longer-term trend that shows scores on the rise.

Really? With education emerging as a key economic issue and U.S. students falling further behind the global competition, Michigan education officials chose to put the best face on the dubious results.

“Overall, we are pleased with the MME and ACT results,” said Judith Pritchett, chief academic officer for the Macomb Intermediate School District.

Seriously?Not only did Macomb County juniors score below the state average, 11 of Macomb’s 21 school districts are tagged with this assessment: less than 10 percent of their 11th-grade students are on track to be college ready after graduation.

In comparison, Oakland County, which is much larger than Macomb, geographically, had just six school districts in the category of single digits who are college ready.

A closer look at the numbers reveals a countywide school system that is essentially writing off portions of Macomb, dooming certain kids to a life of minimum wage jobs or worse. Here are some numbers for particular school districts indicating which kids are college ready: East Detroit, 1.7 percent; Van Dyke (south Warren), 1.7 percent; and Mount Clemens, 2 percent.

This isn’t about no child left behind. These kids are being left in the dust. They are headed toward a life of poverty and gloom.

Those numbers are staggering when you consider that expert after expert has warned that the emerging job market will essentially ignore those without a college degree for anything but low-level positions. The new U.S. Senate immigration bill seeks to deal with worker shortages through an increase, by tens of thousands, in the number of special visas granted to import foreign skilled engineers, especially for America’s high-tech industries.

State Superintendent of Schools Mike Flanagan, who should know better, relied upon squishy data to suggest that all is well in the Michigan K-12 education system. MME scores are down but the 4-year trend is encouraging. ACT scores improved for the fourth consecutive year.

Is he kidding?The statewide ACT scores showed that just one in five high school students are college ready. That’s hardly making the grade. How does that fit into Gov. Snyder’s plan to make Michigan the comeback state?

“While assessment score fluctuations are not unusual when comparing different classes of students ... this upward trend is good news for students, educators and our state.”

Any parent or taxpayer reading that quote should feel like they’ve been played.

To suggest that low ACT scores are not a concern belies the connection between the learning levels established by the universal American College Test and the Common Core Standards that seek to establish national guidelines for a quality K-12 education. When those Common Core goals, already approved by 46 states, were recently subjected to an 11th-hour delay and review by Republican lawmakers in Lansing, Flanagan was furious.

He knows that those standards represent the best chance for the nation to catch up on the global scoreboard.

In testing of 15-year-old students in dozens of industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks below average in mathematics, behind nations such as Estonia, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic. In reading skills, the U.S. stands in the middle of the pack, trailing the likes of Belgium, Norway and Iceland. In science, we are average, with Poland and Hungary outscoring our kids.

These rankings are based on the Programme for International Student Assessment. The PISA exam tests kids’ ability to use their academic skills to solve real-world workplace situations. These are “word problems,” not multiple choice, that force students to rely upon their knowledge, creativity, analytical abilities and critical thinking – all the attributes 21st Century employers demand of their workforce.

So, here’s the overall education situation: Michigan kids are falling behind average U.S. kids, and typical U.S. kids rank no better than mediocre on academic tests compared to students across the globe.

But there’s one more factor – the diverse demographics and economics that separate the U.S. from most nations.

The overall student scores gloss over glaring academic achievement gaps between white students and minority and low-income kids.

In a nation with a rapidly growing minority population – and in Macomb County where diversity is quickly settling in – we would be foolish to ignore these unequal classroom performances.

Too many Macomb County parents and taxpayers assume that dreadful test scores are registered at “those” schools, meaning the inner city school districts. And they’re right, to an extent. The ACT and MME scores show that the Detroit Public Schools are still a disgrace. In 13 of the 19 DPS high schools, not one single student is college ready.

Yet, the pattern is the same across southeast Michigan – the schools in the “inner ring” suburbs are demonstrably failing to educate their kids.

In Center Line, 8.3 percent of students are proficient in science on the MME test. In Clintondale (southern Clinton Township), 6.4 percent are proficient in math. In Oak Park, 5 percent are meeting stated goals in social studies, and the numbers for math and science are both at 0.6 percent. In Hazel Park, 9.1 percent of kids have kept pace in math.

This isn’t just an inner city problem. In River Rouge, not one single kid registered an acceptable score in math or science and, not surprisingly, none were college ready.

The Royal Oak-based nonprofit group Education Trust-Midwest warns that African-American students remain a staggering 27.6 points behind white students in MME math scores. Similar black-white gaps exist in science and writing.

And in two areas – between Latino and white students in science, and between low-income and higher income students in writing – the achievement gap has actually widened since 2012.

Education Trust-Midwest, which has the integrity to endure criticism from both the liberal Michigan Education Association teachers union and the conservative Mackinac Center, is smart enough to tell us: “Michigan has no time to waste.”

But for those who have lingered in the education business for decades --those who have endured the clouds of chalk dust -- the way to deal with this storm is apparently to wait for it to blow over.